Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is the authoring language used to create documents on the world wide web. Many HTML documents make use of images as logos, hyperlinks, and the like. HTML defines the structure and layout of a web document by using a variety of tags and attributes. Generally, an alt attribute is an optional attribute that specifies alternative text for images, applets and areas in HTML documents.
The alt attribute has three purposes: First it specifies alternative text that the browser may show if image display is not possible or disabled by a user. Second, the alternative text can be read by screen reading software, so that vision impaired users can follow along. Third, some browsers display the alt attribute's text value in a text box similar to a tool tip when users pass their mouse over the image.
Typically HTML documents contain a lot of references to certain images. For example, each page might have a picture of an index, that serves as a link to the HTML page that contains the index of the entire document. This image might be used thousands of times. The author will need to specify the alt text for this image every time it occurs. Additionally, another author might create alt attributes for the same image with a different text value.
Currently, adding the alt attribute as a manual intensive process. For HTML documents containing large number of images, the process of adding alt attributes becomes more and more time consuming. For example, some HTML editors allow alt text to be added within the application itself. Each image may be selected and a dialog box opened which accepts alt attribute text. However, each and every image file throughout the HTML document must be selected and a corresponding alt attribute text specified. Furthermore, not all HTML editors currently provide for entering alt attribute text.
In addition, if the HTML was not authored in the same editor as the one used to add the alt attribute, then the editor might be adding a lot of its own proprietary HTML codes to the document. For example in Microsoft Word, a simple four-line HTML document could easily span two full pages once the document is saved. On top of that, Microsoft Word will move the images to a new location, which is not at all what a editor might want.
Alternatively, if the editor does not have a HTML editor which supports adding alt attributes, the editor may need to open each HTML file in a text editor. However, the editor cannot see the image in the text editor. Therefore, the editor may need to open the image file in an image viewer application, in order to determine an appropriate alt text descriptive of the image. The editor can then hand code the HTML alt attribute using the text editor. Although the original HTML source code is preserved, the editor must use multiple applications and perform multiple steps for each and every image throughout the HTML File. Thus the process becomes slow and cumbersome.
Another problem with the current method of adding alt attributes arises when the HTML document is translated. The alt text will not be picked up as a translatable piece of content, because the alt attribute is part of an HTML tag. Thus, one will always have an English alt text unless the HTML file is translated entirely. Therefore, when the HTML document is translated, the translator must open each file containing an image individually and translate the alt attribute tag itself. While, typically translations are done on a dollar amount per word basis. The opening of all the files and translation the alt attribute is done on an hourly basis and can get very expensive, because of the additional time required to open each image and the inability to apply a translation memory tool. Furthermore, versions of the software might not be available to perform the work, thus complicating the process and typically resulting in high costs and delays.
Yet another problem with the current method arises with regard to maintenance of the HTML document. As the HTML document is updated, new images may be inserted. There is no mechanism that will flag the newly added images that need an alt attribute. This means that periodically the help set must be checked for missing alt attributes, doubling or tripling the amount of work required to keep the files current. This can also apply to new releases of the same documents for different versions of a product.
Thus the need exists for being able to specify alt attribute text once for each and every occurrence of a particular image in a file set. The need also exists for being able to only update the alt attribute value in the HTML source code. The need also exists for creating a highly productive browser-based front-end that provides the editor with all the data that is needed for creating, editing, and managing alt attributes. Furthermore, the need also exists for providing a superior, highly scaleable, translation extension.